UPDATED: The Afghanistan Report the Pentagon Doesn’t Care If You Read

Foreign Policy, Media, Military, War

“The war has been a disaster and the military’s top brass” is lying to the American public to keep the adventure going, never mind the grunts that give up the ghost for the brass’s career designs. Wow. That can’t be, can it?

Sure it can. It’s probably quite unremarkable.

Anyone who has been reading this space and articles with any regularity will yawn, and then, disinterestedly, peruse the report written by active-duty officer Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis, who is “a 17-year Army veteran recently returned from a second tour in Afghanistan.”

The title of the article in Rolling Stone is “The Afghanistan Report the Pentagon Doesn’t Want You to Read.” Don’t you think that’s over-dramatic? Is deception to keep the killing fields open for the business of the military-industrial-complex that unusual? Hardly.

“If the public had access to these classified reports they would see the dramatic gulf between what is often said in public by our senior leaders and what is actually true behind the scenes,” Davis writes. I don’t think so. The American public is a zombie.

Davis last month submitted the unclassified report –titled “Dereliction of Duty II: Senior Military Leader’s Loss of Integrity Wounds Afghan War Effort” – for an internal Army review. Such a report could then be released to the public. However, according to U.S. military officials familiar with the situation, the Pentagon is refusing to do so. Rolling Stone has now obtained a full copy of the 84-page unclassified version, which has been making the rounds within the U.S. government, including the White House. We’ve decided to publish it in full; it’s well worth reading for yourself. It is, in my estimation, one of the most significant documents published by an active-duty officer in the past ten years.

READ MORE.

UPDATE (Feb. 15):

Refreshers for the record from “‘JUST WAR’ FOR DUMMIES” March 12, 2003: “I’m no pacifist. While I don’t condone the lingering American presence in Afghanistan, and while I doubt the abilities of the U.S. military to contain al-Qaida there, I supported going after bin Laden’s group in that country. That was a legitimate act of retaliation and defense, accommodated within St. Augustine’s teachings, whereby a just war is one ‘that avenges wrongs, when a nation or state has to be punished, for refusing to make amends for the wrongs inflicted by its subjects.'”

And from “A War He Can Call His Own” July 18, 2008: “The initial mission in Afghanistan was, after all, a just one. Going after al-Qaida in Afghanistan at the time was the right thing to do and was a legitimate act of retaliation and defense accommodated within Just War teachings. Al-Qaida was responsible for the murder of 3,000 Americans. The Taliban succored al-Qaida and its leader bin Laden. The President had told the hosting Taliban to surrender bin Laden and his gang. The Taliban refused. America invaded. So far so good. But that initial mission mutated miraculously, and now we are doing in Afghanistan what we’re doing in Iraq: nation building. Nations building is Democrat for spreading democracy. Spreading democracy is Republican for nation building. These interchangeable concepts stand for an open-ended military presence with all the pitfalls that attach to Iraq. …”

Budget Baloney

Conservatism, Europe, Federal Reserve Bank, Feminism, Uncategorized

If Barack Obama gets reelected, he will face two Republican Houses. Thus his budget plan has no hope of ever being put to the vote. “It’s all about election year 2012, not fiscal year 2013,” writes CNN’s Alan Silverleib, about Obama’s $3.8 trillion budget.

Obama’s plan hikes taxes on the wealthiest Americans to the tune of roughly $1.5 trillion. It ends the Bush-era tax cuts for families making over $250,000 annually while enacting the so-called Buffett Rule, requiring households earning more than $1 million to pay at least a 30% rate. …
The administration is proposing to spend billions on infrastructure, education and domestic manufacturing. Among other things, Obama’s budget includes $30 billion to modernize schools, along with another $30 billion to hire and retain teachers and first responders….
It also includes an extension of long-term unemployment benefits and the current payroll tax cut, something Congress is expected to take up this month.
“Congress needs to pass an extension of the payroll tax cut and unemployment insurance without drama and without delay and without linking it to some other ideological side issues,” Obama declared Monday morning. “The time for self-inflicted wounds to our economy has to be over. Now is the time for action.”
Now is not the time, however, for new details on deficit reduction.

NATURALLY.

More details from Larry Kudlow. Veronique de Rugy has her say at National Review too.

‘South Africa’s Bloody Freedom’

Africa, Conservatism, Constitution, Crime, Journalism, Media, Political Correctness, Race, South-Africa

There is none so complex and politically charged an issue as the new South Africa. Cosseted American journalists, for the most, can’t and won’t deal with it honestly. Barbara Simpson, WND colleague and beloved KSFO talk-show host, is not a member of the pack. In reviewing “Into the Cannibal’s Pot – Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa,” Barbara castigates “a world media” that are “complicit in the massive, politically correct cover-up of the gradual destruction of that country.”

In her WND column, “South Africa’s Bloody Freedom,” this grand lady reaches beyond the remit of the Mandela-worshiping masses, among whom are the insular, petty, provincial penmen of the American conservative press (pulp and pixels).

I was especially interested in her book because I’ve been to South Africa twice, not as a tourist, but spending time with people who live there, talking with them, seeing how they live, reading local newspapers and seeing it, not through rose-colored glasses, but as it is. It led me to pursue the horrors of Zimbabwe as well. The pattern is clear and almost identical.
Unfortunately, the blindness of our country continues, most recently with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg traveling in Africa.

RIP, Whitney Houston

Art, Music, Pop-Culture

RIP, Whitney Houston. She was weird, wacky, and very talented. Born into a deeply religious family, Houston died addicted and deeply conflicted. She was blessed with a refined singing voice—4 octave range. Once a beauty, she faded fast. Still, in an age where the Beyonce and Jennifer Hudson bump and grind are celebrated at the White House (where once Pablo Casals played), Houston deserves to be remembered as a fine singer. Here she is in one of her finest moments, singing, not screaming (as the others all do), “I Will Always Love You.”

In recent years, American “artists” have botched the National Anthem, both the lyrics and the music. Houston gave us the loveliest, most naturally exuberant, musical, perfectly pitched rendition. She wore the right outfit too, no ho couture at a sports event. What a pro. So all-American. Here Houston is, singing “The Star Spangled Banner” before Super Bowl XXV on Jan. 27, 1991 in Tampa.